Ridiculous D.C. Invite of the Week: Leadership Lessons from PG&E’s Former CEO

Washington is a strange city. You’re confronted with billboards for things normal humans can’t buy, like fighter jets. Small groups of lobbyists cluster in corners of office buildings and swap inside information in hushed tones. And there are the invites. Loads upon loads of invites to seminars and open-bar events and celebrations, all for obscure reasons. Washington trades on these invites. While at a glance they can seem confusing or meaningless, they typically have an ulterior motive. You can build a story around the real and sometimes insidious reasons for the gathering. The Prospect gets a lot of these emails, and each week, we’re going to share one of them with you, and take you inside what might be going on behind the scenes.

Just because Geisha Williams wasn’t CEO of PG&E for long doesn’t mean she didn’t make an impact. Williams assumed the California energy utility’s top job in March 2017; by January 2019, she’d resigned, costing the Fortune 500 list its only Latina CEO.

Great leadership has a way of making itself known even under the fiercest time constraints, which is why, as millions of Californians were repeatedly blacked out throughout October, and thousands fled wildfires not unlike the 2018 Camp Fire that PG&E was found to have caused, Williams is taking refuge at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where she’ll be honored as the featured Bob and Elizabeth Dole Leadership Series speaker.

In 2018, her first full year on the job, Williams banked a nearly 10 percent raise that, according to corporate disclosures, was “tied to corporate performance.” What great performance, you ask? PG&E lost some $7 billion in 2018, and sparked what would become the deadliest wildfire in California history. The company couldn’t find the money to do tree-trimming or maintenance, but managed to find some $10.5 million for lobbying, and an extra $4.5 billion lying around for stock buybacks for investors. Two weeks after she resigned, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving it to a flock of Wall Street buzzards now eagerly circling its legal proceedings with the hope of feasting on its distressed organs.

Williams’s leadership keynote is focused on “Energy Companies and Climate Change.” If her legacy at the company makes that seem like an odd fit, consider the PG&E she arrived at: Starting in 1989, PG&E was one of the foremost electric utilities disseminating disinformation on climate change, muddling the science and recasting global warming as theory, not fact. Their ratepayers may not see it, but given the depths of the climate crisis, that’s leadership that’s endured the test of time.

Do you have a ridiculous D.C. invite you want to share? Email us at DCinvites@prospect.org

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